I leave for New Zealand on March14.Three of my friends are going too .We are participating in a week of watercolour painting with Ev Hales ,an artist from Victoria who conducts Plein air painting trips in various parts of the world.Several of my friends have done repeated trips with Ev and highly recommend her and I am keen to participate and learn how to do quick sketches and paintings.Ev has produced several E books which I have bought from Amazon and these are very skillfully written.I intend to take my IPad so that I can refer to them if I want to.

At Ev's suggestion I bought various qualities and quantities of watercolour paper which I took to Office Works and had cut and spiral bound into different sized books which I will take.She has clearly stated the necessity of travelling light with a minimum of gear and I am determined to do that this time.

Yesterday I spent some time trying out one of the spiral books on differing papers.As we will just be gathering information and not completing "real"paintings I imagine we will be working quickly so that should be a challenge.

Since the busy Christmas season I have been to stay at Victor Harbor with some of my fellow watercolour artist friends.The weather was unbelievably hot with the temperature around 45 degrees every day..Consequently we spent most of the holiday week at our rented beach house in the coolness of air conditioned rooms and I painted for 5 days straight.As a result I have injured my shoulder again and am now only able to start painting again .Carrying heavy framed paintings to the Victor Rotary Art Show didn't help either.I have made a decision to paint smaller paintings from now on .

I enjoyed the time spent painting with friends.We watched some art videos and shared lots of thoughts and ideas as well as reading art magazines and books.A great way to start 2014!